Lost Lake Shore Drive: Mourning An Era

Mansions Of Rich And Famous Yield To Giant Condos

March 31, 1985|By Ron Grossman.

Where is the fun in striking it rich any more?

These days, by splitting the rent on a high-rise apartment, even shop girls and stock boys can enjoy a view of Lake Michigan. But before democracy ruined the neighborhood, shore-front footage was a high civic honor reserved for Chicagoans of entrepreneurial genius--or those with the genetic foresight to have a Daddy Warbucks father.

So when next you chance to ride along Lake Shore Drive between Oak Street and North Avenue, roll down the car windows and listen carefully. As the wind whips through those condo canyons, you`ll hear millionaire ghosts still mourning the era of ``lost Lake Shore Drive,`` when this was their mansion-dotted playground.

The block along the drive from Schiller Street to Banks Street is now covered with an enormous apartment slab that is home to 740 families

--plebeians all, no matter how much their monthly assessments might be. Should any residents presume to think otherwise, let them pause for a moment before again using their house keys. Their predecessors` pockets and purses were never weighted down by such populist devices.

No, when Potter Palmer built his castle here, he spent a million dollars, and that was in 1882, when such numbers really meant something. Yet not 50 cents went for locks or keys. Instead, architect Henry Ives Cobb provided that the doors could only be opened from the inside. How better to demonstrate to the great unwashed that the Palmers were attended by a round-the-clock corps of 26 servants?

Hailed by critic Thomas Tallmadge as ``the mansion to end all mansions,`` the Palmer residence was differently reviewed by novelist Arthur Meeker.

``In the 1880s and 1890s, taste in America, we must admit, was as bad as it has ever been,`` noted Meeker, who, like the Palmers, was a member in good standing of Chicago high society. ``Mr. Palmer had no more of it than his contemporaries. His own liver-colored goldfish castle, dear to us all for sentimental reasons, was a monstrosity.``

Yet that harsh verdict might be colored by neighborhood rivalries. Meeker himself had been raised on Prairie Avenue back when that South Side street was the city`s Gold Coast, while Potter Palmer`s castle was more than a home. It was also a marketing device intended to induce Chicago`s rich and famous to transfer their class allegiancies to the lakefront on the North Side.

Until then, the shoreline had been chiefly noted for its frog ponds, but having already made one fortune by developing State Street as the city`s shopping mecca, Palmer judged that he could turn that trick again in affluent residential property. Besides his own ``model home,`` Palmer had his wife`s role as Chicago`s arbiter elegentarium going for him.

The grande dame to end all grande dames, Bertha Palmer dominated the city`s social set in a way that since has never been matched. To be accorded an invitation to her annual New Year`s party was the ultimate sign of acceptance into circles that count.

Indeed, Bertha did have a certain flair for entertaining. Once while visiting London, she decided to throw a little bash for a few British chums. To give the party a little background music, she transported over the entire Parisian cast of the Oscar Wilde-Richard Strauss opera ``Salome.`` They must have been in good voice; the next day, King Edward asked her for an encore performance.

But then, Bertha always had a way with royalty. During the Columbian Exposition of 1893, the Infanta Eulalia of Spain at first refused to attend a reception hosted by an ``innkeeper`s wife,`` as she chose to describe Bertha. Persuaded belatedly to accept an invitation to the Palmer mansion, the Spanish princess discovered that the ``innkeeper`s wife`` knew a few social snubs of her own. ``Mrs. Palmer`s guests,`` one of them reported the next day, ``had all been instructed to bow and curtsy twice, once to the Infanta and once to their hostess (Bertha).``

With the aid of a few such well-advertised events, Potter soon sold off all the lake shore footage he had picked up cheaply. By the turn of the century, the area around his castle had robbed Prairie Avenue of its former standing among the gentry, and the north lakefront became a preserve of the good life.

Just down from the Palmers, at 1234 Lake Shore Dr., was the mansion of Robert Todd Lincoln. Though he was Honest Abe`s son, the log cabins were entirely in his family`s past. From the perspective of Lake Shore Drive, evn the White House seemed like a step down. Once, Robert Lincoln declined the Republican Party`s invitation to run for president on the grounds that having to move to Washington would get in the way of his regular golf game.